With home-field advantage throughout the playoffs locked up, Strong heads into their regular-season finale with one more goal to accomplish.
Tonight, the Bulldogs can claim an outright conference championship when they hit the road to take on Cutter Morning Star in 8-Man South play.
Game time is set for 7 p.m.
The Bulldogs (7-0, 5-0) locked up the league’s No. 1 seed for the playoffs with a 34-14 win at Spring Hill.
The Eagles (2-6, 1-5) are coming off of a 70-6 loss at Mountain Pine and have been eliminated from the postseason picture.
“They’re a run-dominant team,” Strong coach Sirl Wright said. “They run a version of the Wing-T from the shotgun. From there, they run it left, right and press repeat for pretty much the whole game. They don’t pass it very much, but they do sprinkle it in. They’re probably over 80 percent run, so they’re a running team.”
When asked to compare the Eagles to other schools Strong has faced, Wright said there were two.
“They’re similar to Brinkley and Mountain Pine, but those two teams spread it out to give you a different look every now and then,” Wright said. “Their bread and butter is pretty much is getting foot to foot and tackle to tackle and just try to run it at you. Also, Spring Hill ran at us more, so we’ve been kind of prepped on that.”
With a win, the Bulldogs can win the school’s first outright conference championship since 1977. Strong has already clinched a share of the league title, which is their third in school history.
Then there is also the matter of finishing the regular season undefeated.
“We’re just going to try and hold serve and finish out the season where we’re still going to try to keep that zero in the loss column,” Wright said. “I’m not aware of any Strong High School team going undefeated throughout the season, so that would be a great accomplishment.”
With the playoffs starting next week, there have been instances where teams will try to keep some things under wraps for the postseason, but Wright said everything depends on the circumstances going into the last game of the season.
“It’s situational,” Wright said. “It depends on the opponent and then also what’s the circumstance you’re going into the playoffs in. We know what our destiny is going into the playoffs, so we can just kind of keep it vanilla. We don’t have to show all of the bells and whistles. We’ll keep it vanilla and just do what we do and move forward from there.”
Last week against Spring Hill, the Bulldogs’ defense turned in a sterling performance.
Jayme Correa had 22 tackles including 15 solo stops, while Byron Maze had 20 tackles.
In addition, Strong’s defense intercepted four passes with LaQuincy Shelton returning one of his three interceptions 96 yards for a touchdown.
Ja’Kiem Woods also had a big game, finishing with 14 tackles while forcing two fumbles and recovering one.
“I was really proud of them,” Wright said. “I teach them and emphasize the point of defense wins championships. If you can stop people, but they can’t stop you, then you’re always going to be in the better half of the wins column.”
But perhaps the biggest performance went to Caneilus Betters, who put the clamps on Spring Hill standout receiver Colin Purifoy.
“They have a tall, possession-type receiver whose been going deep on everybody, and he pretty much shut him down,” Wright said of Betters. “For the most part, he didn’t have any touches, not even a bobble of a ball, so Betters did an excellent job of covering him up, and Shelton just played over the top. It was a great job by Betters.”
Trying to contain an explosive offense is difficult, and how the Bulldogs try to do that on a weekly basis varies.
“Each week is situational, and we break down pretty much all of the things that they like to do and try to remove some of those things,” Wright said. “I understand that we can’t remove everything, but we try to remove their bread and butter plays. If we can do that, then it gives us a great chance. Then it all comes down to that old core principle of blocking and tackling.”
The Bears were the state runner-up in eight-man to Mountain Pine last year, and Wright was pleased to see the Bulldogs have success against a team that has played on the state’s biggest stage.
“The great thing about going against Spring Hill is that they have had a lot of success in eight-man,” Wright said. “They were the runner-up last year and what I tell my kids is when you’re top-ranked or if you’re the current champion, you’re going to have to expect everybody’s best and don’t get complacent and don’t start looking forward to other games. Always take this next opponent and go one game at a time. Our kids pretty much did that and I was proud of them.”
As far as preparing for the Eagles goes, Wright said he hasn’t deviated from the normal week although the playoffs start next week and the Bulldogs have their seeding in place.
“It’s pretty much business as usual,” Wright said. “We do understand our positioning and where our future lies and entails, but also we’re just trying to finish off the season strong and not have any hiccups or injuries. Along with our freshmen we moved up, it gives us a little bit more depth, so if we do get an advantage on them, we do have more people we can roll in and roll out to give those starters a little bit of rest and make sure they go into the playoffs healthy.”
If the Bulldogs are to finish the regular season with a win, the defense must stop the run.
“Stop the run. That’s the key component is stop the run,” Wright said.
“If we can stop the run, it comes to special teams and offense, and I think our offense is stable enough and balanced enough to score on most opponents. As long as we stop them from running the ball, we’ll be fine.”